Chapter 7
Ellary
When your heart is broken, time doesn’t matter.
Life doesn’t matter.
Two days pass with masses of balled-up tissues, red eyes, and snot dribbling down my face. Grief is not pretty. It’s downright ugly. I relive the worst day of my life over and over.
Jackson’s groan at his office desk.
Rachel rising with a smile that Jackson returns.
The anguish that makes my heart ache never goes away. It just sits there, simmering in my head, festering like a gangrenous wound, eating me up from the inside out.
That’s pain.
That’s heartache.
My mom strokes the hair back from my face as I soak the pillow with my tears for the second day straight. I haven’t moved from the air mattress Dad set up for me when I came home.
“Sweetheart, I know you’re hurt and in pain, but you need to eat something. This isn’t good for the baby,” Mom says.
“I just want to cry forever,” I say into the pillow, my voice muffled.
“Or I could kill him,” my sister offers from beside me.
A tiny smile curls my lips as I lift my head, but I still hurt.
“You can’t kill him,” my dad says from the armchair he pushed aside to make space for my air mattress. “I’ll convince him to go onto his roof for something and push him off. Make it look like an accident.”
“Phillip!” Mom exclaims.
“I was joking, Susie,” he says gruffly.
She continues to look at him with a dark brow raised.
He lets out a long-suffering sigh and rubs a hand over his face. “Okay, so I wasn’t joking. But I promised Ellie I wouldn’t lay a hand on him. So I won’t.”
I saw the look in my dad’s eyes when I told him what I’d walked in on in Jackson’s office. Lila had called our parents and told them a lot of what I’d said to her on the phone before I arrived at the house. I couldn’t have gone over it again. It hurt too much.
But yesterday, in the brief interlude of what felt like never-ending tears, I told my parents everything.
All the while, my dad looked like he was mentally burying Jackson six feet under, but I’d expected that.
I’ve always been a daddy’s girl, and he’s always been so protective of his two daughters.
I made Dad promise not to kill Jackson, and he had reluctantly agreed. But if Jackson knows what’s good for him, he’ll stay away from this house because one look at the man who broke his daughter’s heart, and Dad’s promise to keep his hands to himself will evaporate into dust.
“I’ll make you a sandwich,” Mom offers, kissing my forehead.
Before I can stop her, she’s rising from beside me and slips out of the living room. It’s only a handful of steps, and she has to squeeze herself into the tiny amount of space between the air mattress and Dad’s favorite armchair that doubles as a recliner.
Dad shoved the other armchair and the couch to the side of the room.
Now, no one can get to them because of how much space this air mattress takes up.
You have to crawl across it. I can do it and so can Lila, but Mom took one look at the other armchair and perched on the air mattress instead.
It keeps rocking alarmingly with each movement.
I don’t think it’s made for three people, since with me, Lila, and my mom sitting on it before she went to make me a sandwich, I swear it was slowly deflating.
They moved into this house years ago, downsizing so they could take early retirement after Dad sold the furniture store he owned. The lack of space hasn’t bothered me, but I feel bad for Mom and Dad.
I drag a hand over my wet face. “I should move out of here. You need the room, Dad.”
“You’ll do no such thing.” Dad glowers at me. “Stay for as long as you need to. We don’t use this room much anyway.”
A smile twitches my lips at his barefaced lie. “Dad, you fall asleep in that armchair practically every night.”
“Bad for my back,” he says, “I should really stop. Your mom and my doctor agree. You’re doing me a favor and saving my back.”
This is what family is. They have barely left my side, passing me tissues, threatening to kill Jackson, and gently encouraging me to eat and drink water, even though I want nothing more than to crawl into my self-pity cave and live in it forever.
My cell phone has been blowing up with calls and text messages, though I’ve been avoiding it.
My sister and Mom have been checking my messages for me, thanking my friends for their texts, and asking me if I want them to come over.
Lila told them no. They are mine and Jackson’s friends, and I love them to death, but right now, I just need my mom to hold me, my sister to threaten to kill Jackson, and my dad to be gruff and loving in the way only he can.
One day I’ll talk to my friends face-to-face, but not yet.
“Thanks, Dad,” I sniff.
His expression softens. “You take however long you need, Ellie. The world feels like it’s ending now, but I promise you it isn’t. You’ll hurt, and then you’ll get up and start living again. But for now, just let it all out. Everything else can wait.”
So I take another tissue from the box my sister offers me and don’t let myself think about filing for divorce, selling the house, finding a job, and a new apartment.
I just let myself cry, surrounded by the people who love me most in the world.